Reduplication in Lāri and Jibbāli: A Formal and Semantic Study

The focus of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it describes the most common types of reduplication in Lāri and Jibbāli. Secondly, it discusses their semantics. Reduplication is a morphological process whereby a base or part of it is repeated to express a meaning different from the base. The study explores the formation of 60 Lāri and Jibbāli reduplicative forms collected from 2 native Jibbāli speakers, and through a questionnaire distributed to 10 bilingual Lāri speakers. Although Lāri and Jibbāli belong to distant language families, the study shows that both languages employ full reduplication to accentuate adjectives or nouns. Lāri partial reduplication express meanings as diverse as emphasis, intensity, categorization, attenuation and addition whereas Jibbāli uses reduplication to mark transitivity and to convey continuity in borrowed bi-consonantal Arabic verbs.